December 19, 2015 - 10:42
there are a few things that emerged for me during the meeting with all three profs that i want to mention. they follow no particular flow…
validation.
- there was the general validation of the professors saying that my presence in the classroom was appreciated (which was great), but what i mean specifically here is the validation i’m certainly not the only person who has gone into the prison to do educational work and felt the overwhelming need to stop. i’ve been worried that the hopelessness and rawness that i’ve been feeling would bar me from entering a prison and doing meaningful work. it was really great to know that my path isn’t set in stone, though...
- to this, i also want to speak part of the hopelessness i’ve felt; i put more of a name to it during the conversation, in which i described my experience with our prison classroom as ‘fruitless’. i don’t know if that’s actually true, but i definitely feel that way. did we change anyone by going inside? did any of the incarcerated individuals get something out of our class? did we do “good” work? are we complicit in making the space more permanent?
art.
- as much as i try to have few expectations for new experiences, i realized during the reflection pre-meeting that i expected to have a different kind of art(s)…
- but during the meeting, i put words to some of the ways i felt there was art, perhaps in a less traditional sense – such as using joel’s experimental essays as such. i don't know that i have any more coherent thoughts on this beyond my desire to continue exploring the possibilities of art and its definitions.
disability, illness, regret…?
- during the meeting, i tried to do some of what i did during the final meeting we all had in anne’s classroom – i steered myself away from ‘regretting’ the time i missed because of my disability. i feel like i’m constantly trying to reassess what is my “fault” and what is my “fact” (lived experience with no judgment attached to it). when is it my “fault” for missing classes, for being unable to communicate in certain ways, for my identity alterations…
mourning.
- i say this both in a sense of sadness and celebration. i’m sad to be leaving because bryn mawr is one of the first places i’ve called home and felt it in every aspect for several consecutive years. i’m upset to be leaving such great friends and professors behind who have come to mean so much to me. but in some ways, i’m really glad to be leaving bryn mawr. at the very least, i’m really damn glad to be leaving bryn mawr on this note, on this point of tweaking and complexifying my understandings of positions that i’ve already taken on (like how i was a prison abolitionist before, but through the semester i’ve complexified my understanding of it.).